


Dust Motes in the Light

by cartographicalspine



Series: The Hearthkeeper [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Circle of Magi, Gen, Kinloch Hold, Mage Origin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 21:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12920496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: Amell, a tense, aloof mage on independent study, finds herself unsettled by both the smothering Circle life and some unrequited crushes.Set pre-campaign.





	Dust Motes in the Light

Jowan is distracted again, shadows under his eyes and looking a bit sallow even for his skin color. He’s worrying at his lip and won’t look at her, which means he’s endured yet another lecture from one of the senior enchanters, if not Irving himself. Leda sighs and coaxes him through exercises, first breathing and meditation, and then simple spellwork drills until he settles.

“What’s the point?” he mutters after he lets a flame sputter out in his hands. “It’s not like they’re even pretending to let me try anymore.”

“Your day will come,” she soothes, snatching her bag from atop his footlocker and bustles him out of the dormitories. She only spares a brief, longing glance at the girls’ quarters across the hall (her time has passed for that, anyway). “Come on, I have the next month off for research, and there’s no one I trust more with rapid oxidation than you.”

At this, he smiles a little, if weakly, and follows her to the upper classrooms, where she finds her little setup still undisturbed in the room she’s claimed for her studies. It helps that she has the First Enchanter’s favor for these little privileges. She doesn’t forget a greeting for Cullen, who in another life might have stumbled and stammered terribly at the sight of her; here, he just nods and lets the mage and apprentice pass without so much as a blush.

She doesn’t miss how his gaze follows another passing mage, one who wears the right type of robes for his notice. She does pretend it doesn’t matter.

Jowan and Leda work their notes and methods out on scroll after scroll, and she wishes his teachers could see this because he’s brilliant here, with her in a dusty little corner of the tower. Theory matters as much as practice, and if they’d just give him the confidence, she knows he could build on his own. As it stands, she isn’t surprised they haven’t called him up yet.

He catches her watching and raises a brow. “It was Surana, if you must know.”

Her contemplative smile drops. Right, if she could magic away  _one_  person… “What exactly did his pointy, frigid enchantership want?”

“He...” Jowan chuckles and tosses an unused scroll at her. “Well, not the worst names I’ve heard thrown at him.”

“Full mages of the Circle have to keep it civil,” she shrugs. “I didn't know he was covering your classes now. How bad was it?”

“Right. He wasn’t mad, if that’s what you’re asking-”

Like disappointment is better. She’s tired of seeing the crushed look on Jowan’s face, of their teachers not trying as much as he is, and she doesn’t care what she has to say to Irving to get him away from this particular  _tool_  of a teacher, she’ll do anything.

Sometimes, she wonders if the solution is even inside the Circle after all.

Jowan’s been muttering quietly to himself, like he’s trying to puzzle something out. “-and I don’t know why, but after that weird chat he sort of...congratulated me on the lesson.”

Leda blinks like she’s unsure of where she is, and she did lose the trail of the conversation, didn’t she? “I’m sorry? What was that?”

He rolls his eyes and repeats himself. “The weird conversation I had with him? Were you listening?”

“Of course.”

 _“...sure._  Anyway, I was trying to tell you that he asked about my work with Uldred, which is bizarre because I could swear there’s  _something_  going on between them. Is it just me? Amell, tell me you’re still listening.”

“I’m listening.” Leda scrambles for the week’s rotations and, finding the sheet, scans the schedule briskly. “Yes, that pet theory of yours about our...Uldred’s out, though. Surana picked up his students?”

She taps her chin thoughtfully. “This explains my research extension. But, you aren’t in Uldred’s roster…”

Jowan gets that strange, off-color pallor again and coughs. “Extra help. I...think it’s really working.”

“I agree. But that doesn’t mean Surana had to take you on as well. He had to drop my thesis for the month for extra office hours with another enchanter’s students?”

“I’m sorry,” Jowan winces, glancing at the sprawled arrangement humming quietly around them. “I didn’t realize.”

“No, it’s fine. The less time I spent in Enchanter Tool’s general vicinity, the better. I have more done with you than with him, anyway.”

The corner of her lip quirks up; if anything, at least Jowan deserves her smile. “So, what really threw me was what you said after that. How  _does_  he congratulate one? Is it as stilted and pretentious as his… _everything?”_

Jowan laughs at her attempt at mimicking Surana’s cold, clinical tone and demeanor. It’s easy with Jowan, to drop her own reserved behavior and just be...light. She wishes with everything she has that they could just be light and slip through the cracks of this lonely, ancient tower.

As Jowan excitedly steers the conversation to this new spell he’s learned (one of Surana’s favorites, no doubt), she leans back in her ill-suited robes and just imagines that the light in his eyes never goes out but gets brighter instead. And indeed, for a time afterward, it really does. The routine goes on and her project blossoms, and so does Jowan, seemingly, even with the most unbearable instructor possible, which really does speak volumes about her friend’s capacity to endure. He might just make it after all.

Then, Lily happens.


End file.
